Biggles
Chapter 1: The Proposition A spate of accidents and robberies has been hitting aircraft ferrying gold bullion between England and France. The firm of bullion brokers of Cronfelt and Carstairs wants to set up its own airline. A resourceful pilot is needed because of the risks involved. Colonel Raymond recommends Biggles and Paul Cronfelt, one of the partners of the gold firm looks him up with the proposition. To Biggles' surprise, Stella Carstairs, the daughter of the other partner, Carstairs, comes to see Biggles and attempts to dissuade him. She thinks the venture is fraught with danger which Biggles does not fully understand. Biggles, on his part, is not inclined to act simply as a ferry pilot and so reassures her that he intends to turn Cronfelt down. However, he then gets an anonymous call from Berlin. A voice, vaguely familiar, also warns him not to take up the job. This settles it for Biggles, and he prompty tells Cronfelt that he accepts. Chapter 2: The First Round Biggles makes his first flight, in a Cormorant aircraft. Algy flies escort in a borrowed Bristol Bulldog which Colonel Raymond had helped to arrange. After landing at Le Bourget, an armoured van collects Biggles and the gold. But the van had been hijacked and is manned by the gold robbers posing as guards. They release Biggles after grabbing the boxes of gold. But all is well. The boxes contained lead as a decoy. Ginger takes the real gold from a secret compartment in the Cormorant and delivers it to the destination, Bank of France. Biggles returns to Cronfelt & Carstairs, where, surprisingly, everyone seems to have heard a rumour that the gold has been robbed. Biggles puts them wise but as he reminds Stella, it is only the first round. Chapter 3: The Second Round Biggles is summoned to Scotland Yard and meets Colonel Raymond and Sir Guy Brunswick whose firm was the insurer of the gold shipments. Sir Guy warns Biggles that he suspects a foreign country was behind the crimes, in which case Biggles might have more powerful enemies than he thought. He offers Biggles a reward of 15 thousand pounds for putting an end to the robberies. Biggles takes the warning but is still confident. Back at Hardwick, as he prepares to depart on the second run, a van turns up with another box which it says the bank forgot to include. In flight, the cabin fills with smoke! It's stannic chloride and must have come from that last box. Biggles is forced to make an emergency landing on the French coast. Some armed men turn up in a car. They know all about the secret compartment and seize the boxes there, leaving the ones in the cabin alone. Algy pursues the car in the Bulldog. Meanwhile Biggles and Ginger resume their flight to Paris. Everybody there seems to think they have crashed but Biggles surprises the bank by making another successful delivery. This time he had switched tactics--the decoys were in the secret compartment and the real gold was in the cabin. Biggles and Ginger return to Hardwick but there is no sign of Algy. Chapter 4: Round Three For Round Three, Biggles sends Ginger with the gold in a hired Cormorant and he flies their own as a decoy. Sure enough, Biggles is intercepted by a monoplane fighter and forced down near Beauvais. The robbers find nothing in the aircraft and leave in frustration. Meanwhile Ginger successfully delivers the gold. There is still no news from Algy. On their return to Hardwick, they find Stella waiting for them. She has flown in for a visit in her new aircraft, a Miles Falcon which her father had just bought for her. She notices that BIggles is worried. Before he can say more, a call comes from Berlin. It's that same voice. It warns him that they have Algy. Biggles will shortly be asked to fly a bag of diamonds to Amsterdam. Instead, he has to fly to Aix-la-Chappelle to exchange it for Algy instead. Chapter 5: What Happened to Algy The story rolls back to Algy's point of view. From his Bulldog, Algy could see the car met and transfer its loot to a waiting aircraft which took off heading east. After a long chase, it began to descend and Algy, whose fuel was almost exhausted, had to land nearby as well. Walking into a village, he is shocked to learn that he was in Germany. He is soon captured by some soldiers and taken before his captor: none other than Erich von Stalhein! Chapter 6: Ginger Gets a Shock Biggles departs for Aix-la-Chapelle. Ginger plans to defy orders and follow. Stella Carstairs has left her Miles Falcon overnight at Hardwick so Ginger conveniently "borrows" it. Arriving at Aix, he finds Biggles' Cormorant in flames with a dead body in the cockpit. An unknown green monoplane is just taking off. These are the people who must have killed Biggles! Desparate for revenge, Ginger takes off and pursues the transport heading east. Chapter 7: What Happened at Aix Biggles, of course, wan't really dead. He had arrived at Aix and was met by some gunman from the green monoplane. They had not, of course, brought Algy. They seized Biggles' jewel box and bundled him into the transport and then headed off east. The body in the blazing Cormorant was the pilot of the fighter which attacked Biggles earlier. Somehow he had offended "the boss", probably by messing up the earlier mission. Biggles is brought to von Stalhein's castle and locked up in a room in one of the turrets. Chapter 8: Out of the Frying Pan Looking out of the window, Biggles is surprised to see Ginger. A guard with a dog is approaching so Biggles warns him to hide by singing the words to the tune of "God Save the King". With the guard clear, Ginger climbs up the ivy and passes Biggles a rope made by tying some leather reins together. It doesn't quite reach the base of the tower and Biggles falls into the moat (this is the cover picture in some Armada editions). Ginger shows him the stables and the power station. There is another lighted up room in a turret which they think must be Algy. Another large room one floor up is also brightly lit so Biggles grabs a ladder and climbs up to explore it. In case of emergency, he tells Ginger to cut the power in the castle if he whistles. Chapter 9: Into the Fire The room is actually the great hall of the castle, done up as an office. On the desk, Biggles is surprised to see his jewel box. He is about to take it when a servant enters and Biggles knocks him out. Then he wastes valuable time hiding the body in a side room. He tries to return to his former task but is prevented again by approaching voices. The side room is an alcove with no other exit, so, out of options, Biggles changes into the clothes of the servant and attempts to sneak away past the people in the room but he is spotted--and here Biggles encounters von Stalhein for the first time since the war. Von Stalhein opens the jewel box and is shocked to see that it is empty--but no more shocked than Biggles. After a bit of word play, Biggles convinces the von Stalhein he didn't know about this doublecross. Why would he risk his life climbing back into the castle to fetch an empty box? Biggles now lets out a whistle and the lights go out. He dodges some bullets and crawls through a side door which leads to the minstrel's gallery. After a delay, the lights come on again and Biggles finds he is in some museum, with suits of armour and weapons. He selects an ancient rifle and loads it with a cartridge. Exploring the castle, he finds a room where von Stalhein is interrogating Algy. Biggles attempts to shoot out the light from the door. There is a tense moment when the ancient rifle doesn't seem to work. But it goes off eventually, hitting the chandelier and plunging the room into darkness. Biggles and Algy escape. Running through a maze of rooms, they make it to the roof of the castle where they evade their pursuers and spend the night. Chapter 10: Ginger's Night Out Outside in the castle grounds, Ginger has a tense time waiting for Biggles. Having to evade guards and dogs, he was slightly delayed in responding to Biggles' instruction to cut the castle electricity when he heard the whistle. Alarmed to hear gunshots, he decides to set u the ladder and climb into the castle himself but is pursued. He runs through a door in the castle and straight into the barracks of the castle guards and is promptly arrested. Chapter 11: Back to the Wall Biggles wakes up and sees von Stalhein preparing to execute Ginger in the courtyard. Calling down, Biggles offers to give himself up to stop the firing squard. Biggles and Ginger are brought before von Stalhein who admits that the threatened execution was a ruse to draw Biggles out. There is a brief conversation between them and von Stalhein is genuinely surprised to learn that Biggles was working under the orders of Cronfelt and it was he who had personally handed Biggles the box of diamonds which turned out to be empty. Further discussion is curtailed when Algy climbs down a chimney and strikes von Stalhein from behind. Our friends overcome von Stalhein in the struggle and then escape out the window and hijack a waiting car. They crash through the castle gates and head for where Ginger landed the Falcon. Chapter 12: Hardwick Again Biggles and co. return to Hardwick and find Cornfelt waiting for them. He wants to fly urgently to France but Biggles tells him there will be a delay while the plane is refuelled. Cronfelt leaves his case in the office and goes off to the refreshment buffet. He returns to find Raymond, Sir Guy Brunswick and some Scotland Yard men waiting for him. Cronfelt seizes his case, jumps through a window and almost escapes. But to everyone's surprise, a German transport lands and one of the passengers emerges. He shoots Cronfelt, takes the case and then calmly boards the aircraft which then departs. Chapter 13: Biggles Tells the Story Carstairs and Stella also arrive, saying Cronfelt has stolen all the firm's money. But all is well. Biggles produces from his safe the stolen money and the diamonds he was supposed to deliver to Amsterdam. He also produces a case containing the Devereux diamonds which had been stolen some months before. Algy had seized those from von Stalhein's room when Biggles had shot out the light in the room during the first rescue. Biggles explains that he had become suspicious of Cronfelt because he knew facts which only the opposition could have known, and seemed almost disappointed when Biggles pulled off some succesful deliveries. When Cronfelt turned up asking for a flight, he had delayed him and then called Raymond. Meanwhile, he had switched the contents of his case and inserted some old books. Biggles surmised that the German who had shot Cronfelt at the end must have been von Stalhein himself. He believed Biggles when he insisted he did not know the box of diamonds was empty. Through their conversation, he must have, like Biggles, concluded that Cronfelt, originally one of his confederates, had started to play a double crossing game. With the matter cleared and the threat to gold shipments over, there remained little else for Biggles and co. to do, except, perhaps, to collect Sir Guy's reward! Category:Plot summaries